Friday

May 11, 2012 at 12:01 AMMay 11, 2012 at 3:35 AM

In early 2007, while working for the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., Cyrus Massoumi took a routine flight from Seattle, where he had meeting with a client, back to his home in New York. The flight proved to be a painful one.

Massoumi, who was suffering a bad cold, felt his ear drum rupture in the pressurized cabin.

As the son of a physician, Massoumi knows that doctors often have last-minute cancellations.

"Yet it took me four days to get an appointment, which was frustrating," Massoumi, 35, said recently from New York. "I’ve done everything online for 20 years. When you need health care, finding a doctor is perhaps the most important thing in your life."

A few months later, while still working for McKinsey, the former Palm Beacher convinced a McKinsey colleague, Dr. Oliver Kharraz, to help develop a system that would allow people to book doctors appointments online. The service, which expanded into South Florida in November, allows patients to see a physician quicker, while helping doctors fill cancellations, he said. ZocDoc is free to patients; doctors pay $250 a month to participate.

"It’s also a great convenience for their existing patients," Massoumi said. "My mother booked her first ZocDoc appointment about a month ago in Florida and she did it at midnight. Think of the convenience of that — being able to book 24/7 on your iPod or Android with one click."

On average, 40 percent of ZocDoc appointments take place within 24 hours of scheduling, according to Allison Braley, ZocDoc’s communications director.

The service has grown considerably since its July 2007 founding with the aid of heavy-hitter investors that include Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner.

It now has 1.2 million unique users a month, Braley said.

"We started just in Manhattan with one speciality — dentists," Massoumi. As the economic downturn took hold in 2008, Massoumi, Kharraz and chief technology officer Nick Ganju focused on refining the system in New York. In late 2009, Washington, D.C., became the second ZocDoc city.

"We now have over 40 specialities available on ZocDoc," Massoumi said. The service is in 16 markets, including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia and San Francisco. And Massoumi expects ZocDoc to be available throughout the nation by 2013.

Massoumi said he knew at age 5 that he wanted to be a businessman. He found a family friend — Karim Hakimi, founder of Hakimi Optical, a chain of Canadian eyewear stores — to be charismatic.

"I liked the way he carried himself," Massoumi said.

Massoumi gained faith in his potential while attending the Palm Beach Day School (now Day Academy). A key influence was Ralph Greco, who was Massoumi’s English teacher for three years.

"It was the first time in my life, while taking one of his classes, that I realized that if you work hard, you get rewarded for it," said Massoumi, who spent every waking hour one weekend working on project for Greco’s class. "I respected him so much, I wanted to impress him," Massoumi said.

Greco, who has taught at the school for 43 years, recalls Massoumi as an ideal student.

"He was an outstanding student. He worked hard. He was honest. He was sincere — just the perfect student," Greco said.

"I had no doubt when I had him that he would go on to do great things. His success is no surprise. You could see it coming. Aside from that, he was one of the nicest kids I ever had," Greco said.

On Greco’s advice, Massoumi sought out a top preparatory school. He accepted a spot at the prestigious Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.

"They allowed me Internet access in my room. And that was my deciding factor. Exeter wouldn’t allow it. That was in 1991," Massoumi said. He graduated from the Wharton School, at the University of Pennsylvania, then earned an MBA at Columbia University in New York.

The trip up the corporate ladder was not all wine and roses. A venture selling retail-returns software to e-commerce companies failed about 12 years ago when the dotcom bubble burst, he said. "What I learned is, back in 1999 and 2000, e-commerce was not oriented around returns. It was not a concern of CEOs," Massoumi said.

That was a learning experience, he said. "Coming from a health care background helped me, but there are no businesspeople in my family. So, there were a lot of mistakes early on that we did not replicate at ZocDoc," Massoumi said.

Massoumi said his parents, Dr. Mas and Roshan Massoumi of Palm Beach, have always been supportive.

"My mom has always encouraged me despite the fact that I’ve had some really crazy ideas over the years," Massoumi said with a laugh.

Early mistakes aside, there is no doubt Mas Massoumi, a recently retired hand surgeon, is proud of his son. Mas Massoumi thinks the quirky business name is funny, but said ZocDoc is "the future of medicine."

"Those days of making an appointment over the phone are gone. The new generation is savvy," Mas Massoumi said. "I just can’t be a prouder father."